- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Teachers are taught basic teacher ethics and what the law says licensed teachers are supposed to do -- report suspected child abuse, for example. I don't imagine that laws regarding statutory rape are neglected. They weren't in the "children and the law" course I took, which, while I am not a teacher, I had to take because my degree is in the educational field. Teachers who have sex with their underage male students know it's wrong, the problem is they don't feel it is, and they are unable to resist their impulses. Obviously. Did they ever think about it? Maybe, maybe not.
The one thing they don't teach in schools is how to regulate one's own emotional state, how to recognize one's own emotions and use the head instead of the heart when one is confronted with strong impulses. That's supposed to be something you start to learn from your parents as an infant, and something we assume adults have figured out, and sometimes adults get good at hiding those areas where they're less emotionally mature until...
There should be no difference along gender lines -- from a developmental perspective, teenagers are still developing, and there's already enough to interfere with the maturation process without teachers crossing boundaries and behaving inappropriately, and saying it's in the name of love. Too many people buy into the "romantic" (not really, if you ask me) notion of "one true love" - that's all fine and dandy, until some 40+ woman decides that my/your 12 year old is hers. A 12 year old hardly knows what romantic love is, let alone who he really loves. Teachers are taught developmental stages, too. They know better. They need to act like it.
